Doors
by Starlight226
Summary: [Or, Four Times Agent May Came Through Skye's Door Without Asking, and One Time Skye Went Through Hers] Agent Melinda May has a simple, easily defined relationship with most people. Skye, however, is not one of them. Missing Skye&May scenes explored here.
1. Chapter 1

She wasn't used to this yet-the scrambled, twisted, drug-induced dreams that almost always seemed to include the motorized sound of metal legs clanking in the distance and unexpected explosions opening chasms in the ground around her.

She wasn't yet used to the smell of plastic and disinfectant that met her nostrils around the same moment that she realized she was capable of waking up, or the scraping, inside-out feeling of her previously-intubated throat whose tendrils of pain usually dragged her back to the surface.

And she definitely wasn't used to waking up to someone watching her.

The first time, it had been Coulson. When she had first immerged from the swimming, suspended sleep which had seemed longer than she thought ordinary, he had been there at her elbow, ready to explain, ready to fill her in on the 72 hours that had disappeared from her life. Everything from the gunshots to the GH-325 shot.

Well, she hoped it was everything.

It was a lot to take in either way-an extra SHIELD team that had included Ward's old S.O., an off-the-map SHIELD base rigged with a suicide stopwatch, a mystery drug that had brought her back from the edge only just in time…around that point in Coulson's story, Skye had hit the button on her pain pump and fallen asleep again quickly.

Jemma had been there the next time she'd woken up, taking blood and taking down Skye's vitals. She had added her commentary to the events-reconnecting with Coulson, Ward, and May on the Italian train and the race to the villa to find Fitz and Skye, the fortuitous hypobaric chamber in the wine cellar where they had found her bleeding out-she hadn't been able to say much after that point. Or at least, Skye couldn't make much out. Between sobs, Simmons had said some more things about Zurich and surgery and Coulson's file, and Skye figured she at least had the gist of it by now.

This time though, as Skye's eyes flickered open after another explosion rocked her dreamworld and the swooping sensation in her stomach as she tumbled into an abyss startled her awake, she saw that someone had dimmed the lights in her pod, and the plane was silent. No distant roar of the turbines and no murmur of activity outside her pod. Best guess, they were refueling, meaning Ward was reporting, Fitz and Simmons were restocking, and-

"Coulson's resting," a low voice at her shoulder completed her thought for her.

If she hadn't been lying down, Skye certainly would have jumped. As it was, her legs just jerked like a startled seal's as she turned sharply to look around the edge of the bed.

"Jesus, woman, what is wrong with you?" she managed, actually pressing an IV-stuck hand to her sternum to make sure her heart was still in her chest.

May's shape seemed to materialize like a ghost's as she leaned forward into the paler darkness of the light bleeding in from the emergency lighting system in the hallway.

"What time is-"

"Late."

"Are we-"

"Just outside of Atlanta."

Skye hit the button on her pain pump and prayed to whatever force of nature was listening that the drugs would kick in fast.

"Okay."

The silence that followed might have been comfortable if it had been a month ago when things had started shifting between them. Back when they had been in Utah investigating the girl with the supernatural stalker- when Skye had heard from Coulson about all the Bahrain business and backstory that she would likely never hear from May herself-that time that they had sat together in the cockpit that night had seemed almost…

Whatever. It hadn't lasted long.

The spell had been broken just a short time later, and once again Skye had found herself pitted against the Cavalry at her every turn. May's cutting words about putting aside her personal agenda had hurt more than she probably realized, and getting thrown off the plane right after that by Hand (at May's suggestion) had been the bitter icing on an unpalatable cake. If saving Coulson together had had any potential of uniting them again, it hadn't worked. May had once again been the silent sentry at his shoulder, constantly facing off against Skye, nothing at all different.

Yet here she was at Skye's shoulder, and for once, not at Coulson's.

"You don't have to stay here, you know. I know it's not…I mean, I know you don't…you probably have other things you need to do…" Skye kicked herself for managing to sound so incoherent.

"Simmons told us to keep a close watch."

"For what? Worried I'll run away?"

"You do have a habit of disregarding orders."

Looking back, Skye would not be able to pinpoint exactly what made her say it-she would try to blame it on the lack of good sleep, the painkillers still muddling her judgment, or even the over-stimulating presence of a human chees grater. Whatever it was, it made Skye reach for the controls on her bed, crank herself up into a marginally more dignified position, turn as well as she could to face the blank-faced woman at her shoulder, and take a deep breath, and throw her cards on the table.

"Look, I get it. We are probably never going to see things eye-to-eye, and I bet I've been the rock in your shoe from day one-underfoot and unforgettably annoying. But I've had it up to here with this passive aggressive dance. If I've done something specific to piss you off, can we just have a good old-fashioned fight right now and then move on? Because I don't know if I'm going to be up for it once my drugs where off."

She had meant for it all to sound secure and definitive, but the thickness of her tongue and the dryness of her throat made her sound more hungover than drunkenly confident. For a long moment, May said nothing, just held her gaze on the half-light. It was long enough for Skye to mentally scroll through all the possible outcomes, the most likely one seeming that she was about to get her ass kicked, or at least her pride whipped.

Instead, however, May just stood up and walked out.

She wasn't gone long, but it was long enough for Skye to lower her bed again, her mind reeling with the possibilities of what had just happened. There was no way in hell that that woman was admitting defeat, but it also seemed even less likely that May was running from Skye. Before she could narrow it down to even three likely options, however, the lights in her pod were flicking on, and May was walking back in, shutting the pod's door behind her.

She tossed a bottle of water onto Skye's mattress near her hip as she pulled the stool out from the corner of the room until it was more or less at Skye's knees.

"Why don't you sit back up and drink that, and let me do the talking for a minute," she said evenly.

It was not phrased like a suggestion.

Skye hit the controls on her bed again and cracked open the water, trying not to seem nervous. The woman met her eyes as she sat down on the stool, her shoulder against Skye's bed, as dead on as she could be.

"A few weeks ago, when Coulson had just been taken and Hand was on this plane and she ordered you off-"

Skye couldn't help but roll her eyes subtly, knowing May would see it anyway.

"-Ward came into the cockpit after they had helped you get out before your transport arrived. He said the things that you probably would have like to hear him say. That I was being too hard on you, that I was not giving you the chance you deserved…and I responded with the truth. That you do more good outside the system than in it. That you are helpful in ways none of us think to be. And one more thing that I'm telling you now: you don't have to assume the worst in me."

Skye felt her eyebrows go up involuntarily.

"I know that you and I come down on opposite sides of almost everything. Not the least of which being my approach to missions, like with the girl back in Utah. But I need you to believe me that when I tell you that when it comes to us against the darkness, I will always be on your side."

May looked down at her hands, which were resting on her knees. Skye waited quietly, not sure if this could possibly be real, wondering if her drugs were making her imagine this whole exchange. _There is no way the Queen of Diamonds would ever bare her soul, especially not to me…_

"When we found you in that wine cellar and got you back on the plane in a hypobaric chamber like a transparent morgue drawer…when we still didn't know if you were going to live…" May's fingers flexed slightly into half-hearted fists, "things got ugly. Simmons was doing her absolute best, but she excused herself after briefing us on your status, and Fitz went after her because he knew. The two of them didn't come back for more than thirty minutes. Coulson was barely holding it together. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen him that scared. Ward nearly broke his hand on the hood of the SUV. And I broke protocol. I broke Quinn's nose."

Skye's mouth fell open a tiny bit. "Why would you-"

"Because it's what I do." May's eyes flicked up to Skye's again, dark meeting dark. "I break rules when I care more about the person I'm protecting than the orders I received."

May held her eyes for a long moment, and it gradually dawned on Skye what she was talking about.

"I know you think I'm always in control-the Ice Queen of SHIELD-but what you see is not the natural me. It's just the me who's doing everything she can every day to never make the same mistake that made her leave the field."

Skye's eyes closed slowly, and she felt her brow furrowing with guilt. "Coulson told me-"

"I know."

Skye's eyes flicked back open, meeting May's bravely.

"Is that what happened? He said there was a civilian girl- is that who…" She couldn't make herself finish the thought.

May closed her eyes and seemed to make a decision. Her hands flexed once again into fists on her knees, but then she breathed once, slowly, and everything relaxed. Her hands spread flat, her back straightened beautifully. _Zen warrior, _Skye thought, trying not to flush for some reason.

May opened her eyes and started to speak.

"We were in the middle of nowhere. SHIELD was different then-we were barely getting off the ground with the Internet, and our communications were slower and more rudimentary. Our agent in Bahrain had heard rumors of a gifted individual out in the desert, and they called in a team to investigate and evaluate. When we got there, it still took two weeks of asking around with locals to find him.

"There was a local girl-she was nine years old-who followed me everywhere. She was precious-the kind of kid it seems like the universe conspired to make as irresistible as possible-so I never said no to her. She was familiar with the area, knew everything we need to know about the people in her region, so when we followed a lead out to the desert, I brought her along with us to help translate and mediate-and for my own reasons. No one ever called me on it.

"When we got to the place where the person-a man, not that it matters much-and his followers were, she led two of our operatives inside while Coulson and I were in the car running surveillance with Mathers-another agent. And then everything went south.

Skye had been so enrapt that at first she didn't realize the woman had moved until May was shrugging off her flight jacket-Skye hadn't even seen her unzip it. Underneath, May was wearing a thin black V-neck, which she pulled one arm inside and began to maneuver a little clumsily off with one hand. Once the fabric cleared her head-Skye could see why-a white square of gauze was tucked under the strap of her sports bra at the place where arm became shoulder, the skin around it still a warning shade of red.

"Is that-" Skye's eyes flickered up to meet May's, and the woman nodded

"From the day on the train. But this is much older." May's eyes dropped downwards, taking Skye's with hers.

Her stomach turned.

"The gifted individual had the ability to control fire. He demonstrated that for our agents inside by making our car outside explode."

Skye couldn't move her eyes from May's skin. Wrapping all around the right side of her torso was an expanse of scarring, still the same color as the skin around it but shiny and thick, a topographic map that stretched from beneath her sports bra to disappear under the waistband of her black jeans. May kept talking as Skye studied it.

"Coulson has a few smaller ones to match. He and I both made it out of the car with only cuts and burns, but we lost all our communications and weapons, and Mathers was in bad shape. In the middle of the desert, there was no one to call for help. And then the man put a ring of fire around the whole area to make sure we weren't going anywhere."

May was turning the stool slightly with her toe, as though she knew Skye needed to see the other side. As she pivoted, Skye took in the splash of scarring that reached around her ribs, the blast pattern of scars scattered across her back... May even pushed her hair up off her neck, and Skye saw a patch underneath that had never grown back.

"Coulson wasn't going to let me go in, but I couldn't leave my team or that girl in there, and we knew no one was getting away alive if someone didn't do what needed to be done. I left Coulson with Mathers and went in alone. There was only one way in or out of the building, no time to make my own entrance when we had no idea what was happening inside. So when I went in, the followers caught me-and then they made me watch as the man set my partners and the little girl who had helped us on fire."

Skye's eyes closed slowly, her mouth pulling tight. "Jesus," she muttered. All the pieces came together into a world-shattering picture.

When she opened her eyes again, May had already worked her t-shirt back on.

"And that's why…the people inside…why you wouldn't tell Coulson…why you don't like being called the Cavalry…isn't it?" Skye finally said, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes.

"Not because it reminds me of what happened-I am reminded of that every time I look in the mirror. It's because people think that what did was brave, or even enviable-and I know the truth. That what I did was stupid. Reckless. And it cost a lot of people. It nearly cost me everything."

Skye was quiet for a long time, mentally replaying every conversation she had ever had with Agent Melinda May, the so-called Cavalry. Every time she had scorned the woman's apparent inability to connect emotionally, every time her heart had churned in frustration every time they had butted heads.

Her own words from Utah came back to her-words not about May but spoken in front of her- _Somebody with that much empathy being responsible for that much loss of life? She's devastated..._

_People believe what they need to believe to justify their actions._

_Is that how you justify your "shoot first" policy?_

"Why are you telling me this?" Skye asked, finally dropping her hands, hoping she had pressed any ambitious tears back into storage for later use. She noticed that May had moved just a little bit closer, sitting more or less at Skye's elbow. Her eyes were soft as she answered.

"Because I know how it feels to be right where you are. To be recovering from an injury alone with yourself, to have nothing to think about but what has just happened to you-or what you have done. To be haunted in your sleep by the memories by the memories you manage to lock up in the day. And because right now, you're afraid you're going to turn out like me. Not the same person because of this. Let me save you the suspense-you won't be."

May moved her hand slowly to rest lightly on Skye's stomach; she looked up at the woman, more than a little bit startled by the contact. There was a layer of shirt and three layers of gauze between May's skin and Skye's upcoming scars, but Skye suddenly felt warmer.

"Your life has already been turned upside-down more than once in the short time I've known you. I know you had to walk away from everything that was familiar to you and embrace daily danger and darkness. I know that Coulson told you about your past and what a shock that must have been for you. And on top of everything, there's this." She passed one fingertip gently over the bandage.

"Any one of these things would have been enough to wreck a person ten times over. Instead, I have watched you take all things in stride- adapt, accept, and adjust- and move on. And most importantly, on the other side of all of this, you are still the same girl-throwing herself into all things without fear, able to discern the things that everyone else misses, namely, the best in others. So no, Skye, you haven't done something to make me mad-you're are simply the daily picture of all the things I no longer can be."

May pulled her hand back, though she left it resting on the blankets near Skye's leg.

"Just remember what I said: you don't have to assume the worst in me. I am rooting for you every step of the way. And more importantly: when it comes to us against the darkness, I'll always be fighting for the light- the side I know I'll find you on too."

No response would ever do that statement justice, so Skye said nothing, but held May's gaze and nodded, just once, moving her IV-free hand ever-so-slightly to brush against May's fingers near hers. Not presuming to hold or squeeze, just the simple contact of affirmation.

_I get you._

May's hand turned a little and her fingertips pressed back gently.

_Good_.

The moment was broken by the sound of footsteps on the metal stairs outside the pod, and both women turned to look behind May at the same time. Jemma's face appeared in the window, breaking immediately into a smile as she saw that Skye was awake.

"How are you feeling?" she said warmly as she slid open the door, joining the two women in the tiny cubicle. May stood silently, slipping her jacket back on and moving out of the way and through the door as Jemma began checking the monitors.

"I'm good," Skye, said quietly as May rounded the corner and met Skye's eyes as she passed back towards the staircase. Skye thought she saw the barest hint of a smile as their eyes met.

"Really good," she repeated, returning it.


	2. Chapter 2

It hadn't even been 24 hours since everything had gone to hell once again.

It had only been nineteen hours since she had followed the homing signal from a forgotten lanyard to the storeroom of a non-existent SHIELD base and looked up to see a corpse dripping blood from an opened throat.

Eighteen hours since she had boarded a plane, hand-in-hand with the man she now knew to be a murderer.

Eleven hours since she had posted the photo on the FBI's most wanted list, ten since she had turned the computer around and hailed HYDRA to the traitor's face.

Nine since she had been dragged back onto the Bus held securely in the robotic arm of the man once known as Mike Peterson. Nine since she had watched Ward writhing on the ground in cardiac arrest and had fumbled out the truth that would save his life. Eight since she had unlocked the gateway to everything for the organization that had ruined everything for her.

Six hours since Coulson had burst into the brig within the Bus and minutes later had reversed his car out of the cargo hold as bullets rained down on them from two sources- both of them men that she used to call friends.

And now, with the warm, mottled darkness of a California spring night settling like a suffocating pillow over the city, crashing at a motel in the suburbs seemed like an impossibly anticlimactic ending to the day.

Fitz and Simmons were still sitting at the pool's edge with Tripp nearby like a self-appointed chaperone, and Coulson hadn't come out of his room for nearly an hour. Skye had eventually disappeared back into her room where the wifi signal was stronger and was scrolling the news feeds, seeing what everyone who had no right to an opinion was saying about them.

_Government Demands Answers for East Coast Aircraft Crashes_

_SHIELD Added to the International Terrorist List_

_Senator Christian Ward Vows He Will Not Rest Until HYDRA Is Finished_

_The Prison That Doesn't Exist-How Do We Recapture the Invisible?_

_Former SHIELD Commander Maria Hill Scheduled to Address Congress Again 9am EST_

_Slideshow: HYDRA, World War Two, and Its Imagined End_

_Editorial: Can Anyone Be Trusted to Keep Us Safe?_

Skye wanted to feel angry. She wanted to feel something other than the yawning emptiness that seemed to have cleared all her organs out and left her feeling stunned and disoriented, like when you were swimming and put your feet down expecting to feel the bottom but instead there was only space going down, down...

But everything had been turned inside out so fast, everything had tumbled into this oblivion in so few hours that there had been no time to accept, no time to recalibrate, no time to find any solid-enough ground that she could put her feet on again. Hell, she had just plummeted from a perfectly safe and functioning plane because the pilot was working for the other side. If that didn't capture the feeling of the past not-even-24 hours, she didn't know what other metaphor could.

At least they were all together again.

Once Lola had been safely deposited in the underground parking matrix of Los Angeles and Skye had been hustled by Coulson into a nondescript minivan, Jemma's arms around her had been the greatest feeling of relief she guessed she had ever felt in her life. Tripp and Fitz had been there too, and an imposing brunette behind the wheel-who Skye was now recognizing from the news feeds as Commander Hill- had driven them swiftly from the city to this motel. She was gone already, striding from Coulson's door back to her car without even glancing at the rest of them as she left, and Skye hadn't had the heart to ask what had come of the conversations between her and Coulson when he had reappeared for the vending machine not long after.

Just like she had not been able to make herself ask about the other face of their _former_ team that was still unaccounted for.

There were two possibilities, and either would be too much more to accept today_. _Either May was gone where no one could bring her back…or gone with no desire to come back.

_If the first_-her stomach twisted treacherously-_then there was nothing better to be done than to find Ward and put him down_.

Skye wanted to tell herself that May was too good to be bested by Grant Ward, but the truth was that surprise had been his key to everything. She was certain it would have taken little effort on his part to catch her unsuspecting and put a bullet in her head. The fact that she hadn't seen any blood in the Bus's cabin or cargo bay on their way in and out meant nothing-there hadn't been any in Eric's office either.

If it was the second option, however…then there was no one to be angry at except May.

"_She never felt anything for us, did she? She just played us to keep an eye on Coulson."_ Skye's own words from earlier flashed through her mind.

"_That was her mission," _Ward had replied.

_This team was nothing more than a mission for her, just like it was for Ward. _

Skye's stomach twisted again. It had been god-knows-how-long since she'd eaten, but she pushed her laptop aside and planted her feet on the floor, reaching for the nearby wastebasket just in case.

_The woman had done what she'd been ordered, fulfilled her requirements to her commanding officers. And just like that, one more foster mom decided she'd done her duty and had walked away._

At least, Skye hoped she had walked away.

Her stomach heaved insistently this time, and Skye grabbed the trashcan. There was nothing left inside to throw up, though.

Only choking emptiness.

She dropped the plastic bin and hung her head on her hands.

_Homeless, parentless, nameless and non-existent. Nothing new. Salvage what you can and look ahead. That's all you can do now. _

The machine in the door made a funny noise, and her head shot up. The door had already closed again before Skye was able to get her voice to work.

"May."

Had she received a defensive kick to the ribs for it, Skye still wouldn't have done any different-one second Skye was sitting on her bed, the next she had covered the whole distance to the door with a single bound and had May wrapped in her arms.

_Not dead. Not done._

She could barely get a single other word out as she buried her face in May's shoulder, shamelessly pressing herself into every part of the other woman's space, confirming that everything was real and intact. It was only when her lungs gave her a warning spasm that she remembered to breathe, drawing in a gasp against May's shoulder that unfortunately carried a fractured sob with it on the exhale.

"I thought-" she attempted, speaking down into the leather of May's jacket. She didn't trust herself to try to finish the sentence.

May didn't make her.

"I know," she whispered apologetically, and Skye believed the knew both possibilities had gone unspoken.

May was actually holding her back, Skye eventually realized with a grain of surprise. Not really pulling her close, but May's arms were definitely around her, one hand moving slowly across her shoulders, the other arm warm and assuring around her ribs, a wordless apology- _I'm sorry, but I'm here now._

Skye pressed her mouth into May's shoulder to smother any more embarrassing sounds. Her arms tightened a little more. _I'm still mad at you._

May's arms tightened too. _It's ok. You should be._

"What did Coulson say?" It was the first full sentence Skye was able to blurt out. Surely May would not be here without reporting to him first. She pulled back, stepped back, let the woman actually move into the room.

She saw May shrug as she followed her over to the beds. "He said he had hoped I would come back."

"He knew you were alive then...I didn't have the heart to ask him..." Skye suddenly felt childish.

But May simply gave a small nod as they sat down facing one another. "Sometimes there's only so much bad news you can stomach in one day."

Skye's mind went back to the night when everything had turned over at once- Ward shooting an unarmed quadriplegic and getting locked in their brig, the coded transmission filling SHIELD frequencies, the rerouting of their Bus to an unknown location, Fitz's discovery of May's secure line and the subsequent showdown with Coulson and Skye where guns had been pulled...

"Please don't ever make him look at you like that again." Skye knew May would know what she was talking about. And it was the first condition she had to lay down.

A wistful smile pulled at May's lips. "I would like to tell you that will never happen again, but unfortunately I am sure it will. He and I are too strong-willed to be on opposing sides and not get upset with one another."

"Then don't put us in the middle. Don't make me point a gun at you again. Don't make me choose between Mom and Dad."

May's eyes flickered minutely, an indulgent response to Skye's slip of words. Skye bit her lip, ready for the woman to move back further, for the boundaries to be redrawn. Instead, May leaned forward, her elbows on her knees and a sad smile on her lips.

"You're right. You all shouldn't have to choose. But we've seen enough now to know that promises about an uncertain future are damn hard to keep. I want to promise you that we're going to find Ward and Garrett and make them suffer. I want to promise you that this is the last time someone we trust will take us by surprise. I want to promise Coulson that I won't keep anything from him, but we all know that those are promises I'm not certain I can keep. However..."

Her hand reached across the space and rested lightly on Skye's knee, like a witness on a Bible. Skye was unable to look away from May's eyes, however, as the woman renewed her vows.

"I _can _promise you all that I will always try my hardest to make the decisions I think best to keep the people I care about safe. I wish I could promise you I will always make the right ones. But as long as you know that I'm on the side of the light, you can know that I'm on your side-and you should never have to make a choice like that again. I'm afraid that's the best I can do."

"One more thing?" Skye's own voice caught her off guard. May raised one eyebrow. Skye covered the woman's hand with her own.

"If you ever leave again, you have to tell me why."

Three long seconds. Then May's hand turned beneath Skye's accepting it, squeezing gently. A single nod.

_Enough?_

Her hand squeezed back._ More than enough._

_Good._


	3. Chapter 3

It was not the first time she had dreamed about it-the dust and the dank in the dim air, the minimal light glinting off the teeth bared in a sneer and the gun barrel pointed at its target, the tiny explosion of gunpowder and sparks marrying to launch the tiny projectile faster than sound-

It wasn't the first time she had awoken with a gasp and a choked-off cry, her limbs jerking to catch herself even though she was already flat on her back. Not the first time she had awoken with tears already on her cheeks and her heart in her throat…

But it was the first time she had awoken to a hand already around hers.

"You're not there," a voice at her shoulder murmured, gentler than she had ever heard it but no less solid. "You're not there. It's just a dream. You're safe."

Skye ground her eyes shut, sending a few more tears sliding into her ears, pursing her lips against the unwelcome sob threatening to scrabble out of her. The image hovered, projected on the darkness behind her eyes… the icy malevolence illuminated in those dark eyes as the gun went off-

"Skye," the soft voice drifted in again, the fingers around her hand tightening marginally. "Come on. Open your eyes and get your bearings."

She let her eyes open to the muddled darkness around her- the tiny square of ceiling above her tinier bed in the tiny alcove that she was defiantly still calling _her_ room on the Bus. May was kneeling next to her bed, one arm resting on the mattress, her hand wrapped around Skye's, which was still clenching a handful of sheet.

"Come on…come on back…" the woman was repeating quietly, barely more than a whisper, the pressure of her hand grounding Skye, anchoring her, pulling her to the surface.

Skye drew her hand out from under May's and pushed herself up slowly, not looking at the other woman as she quickly smeared the tears away with her sleeve. May stood as Skye turned outward and leaned back against the cabin wall, tipping her head back and letting her eyes close as she tried to get her breathing under control.

"It's too cold for you to be sleeping out here in the hangar. You want to come back inside?"

Wordlessly, Skye shook her head, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

A beat of silence passed in the darkness as neither moved. Then finally, surprisingly,

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Skye sighed, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, stuffing her bare feet beneath the tangled blanket because _damn it, it really was cold_… When she opened her eyes, she found that they had adjusted to the shadows. May was still standing silently by her bed, a slightly deeper form of darkness.

"It wasn't me this time," she managed in a voice that seemed to gurgle. "Quinn wasn't shooting me. It was Simmons. And Fitz. And Coulson. And you-and every time, he would look over at Ward, who was there, holding me back, watching, like Quinn was waiting for his permission, and Ward would just _nod _each time,and no matter how much I screamed and begged and fought against him it didn't matter, and-"

Her throat abruptly closed like a hose bent double. Ashamed, she covered her mouth turned her face towards the foot of the bed, choking down against the swell of a sob.

"Skye." Without looking up, Skye knew that May had shifted, was sitting lightly on the edge of the bed, one leg drawn up under her as she placed a hand on Skye's shoulder. "He will never get the chance to hurt you again."

Skye spoke out into the nothingness around them. "He will _always_ be able to hurt me again. And I hate him for that. I hate _myself_ for that." Her voice broke on the last phrase, and she trusted the other woman to understand.

May's hand pressed in gently, applying pressure against the flow of a wound, telling Skye that she did.

"He got in where it counted," Skye went on, "That one place I wasn't smart enough to encrypt. I trusted him-I looked up to him-I cared about him…"

"We all did. Don't take a double portion of guilt for any of that."

She tipped her head back and stared into the dark above her as she went on. The sob in her throat was now, strangely, threatening to turn into a manic laugh, so Skye kept talking, refusing to let it take the stage.

"I should have known this was coming. I don't get lucky like this. If I ever find something good, it doesn't last. Just blows up in my face and all I get to keep are the ashes. I should have known that all this was too good to be true, that it was only a matter of time before-"

"_Skye_." May's tone was almost scolding as she drew her hand away, and Skye's head fell to the side to acknowledge her. The woman's eyes caught and held hers intensely, bare reflections in the dimness around them.

"There is only so far I'm willing to let you go down that road. So let me stop you right there before you say something you don't mean."

Chastened, Skye closed her eyes and bit her lip, putting her head down against her knees again. Two breaths passed in darkness before May continued.

"You're right. This was something good once, but now it's ashes. And we have a long road ahead of us to rebuild something valuable again. However, if you genuinely believe that there can't be a good ending to this story, then I can't promise you that we're on the same side. And that's a promise I want to keep, remember?"

Skye felt her throat twisting closed again, felt the emotion bubbling over in her chest, felt the cracks within her fissuring deeper, her insides eroding like a house in a flood... What she wouldn't give to feel the yawning emptiness of the previous week again-anything would be better than this…

And, of course, May knew.

She felt the hand on her shoulder again.

"Sometimes there are no words, but you need to say it anyway. There's no inevitable fight coming. There's no promise of release. So let it out here. Let it out now where you can see it all in front of you, and later we can pick what you want to salvage."

_Will you let me help you?_

"I know…"

May's voice trailed off, but Skye still heard the rest.

_I know it's not much, but I'm here, and it's the best that I can do. _

Skye reached up and covered May's hand, neither pulling nor pushing, just pressing it into herself, as though osmosis was enough to draw in the strength the other imparted.

_It's enough. _

The mattress barely dipped as May slid the rest of the way onto the bed next to Skye. Wordlessly, Skye leaned into her, letting May's arm curl around her back and cage her in, fitting herself beneath the woman's chin. May pulled her other hand slowly out from under Skye's to brush her hair back gently, whispering over her.

"I can't take it away, but I'll ride it out with you. Just hold on."

That was the last thing Skye heard before she came undone.

Neither of them said a word for a long time as months of stress and shame bled from her eyes and crawled out of her throat, soaking into her sleeves and May's shirt. The roaring in her mind fortunately drowned out any of the sounds her voicebox was making on its own, but May never seemed disturbed. Her arm around her moved occasionally back and forth, rubbing her shoulders, squeezing and pressing, tethering her to the surface. The rhythm of May's breathing never changed, a metronome that Skye was able to zero in on and eventually sync with.

By the time the tears stopped, she felt like a rag wrung out, and every part of her ached accordingly. She wasn't sure at what point it had happened, but somehow the blanket had made its way up over her and was now draped around her shoulders and legs, a cocoon swaddling her within May's embrace.

She half expected May to pull away first, her duty done, but eventually it was Skye who lifted her head, wiping her eyes on her already soaked sleeve. May's face was the same calm façade as always when Skye hesitantly met her eyes. She said nothing in response to the tears, only reached out to gently smooth Skye's hair out of her face again, her thumb brushing away the last of her tears on its way back.

"Do you think that I'm not cut out to be an agent?" Skye heard her ragged voice asking before she had actually decided to say it. _Stupid, stupid question. _But she needed to hear an answer, and she needed to hear it from May.

For a terrifying second, May's hand pulled away from Skye's cheek and her eyes softened, almost pityingly, and Skye braced herself for another crippling blow. But then the woman's mouth turned up in the warmest smile Skye had ever seen on it, a ray of light in the dark.

"Actually," she said, "I was thinking that you're going to need a new S.O."

Skye's eyes went wide, and she sat up straighter, turning to face the woman, her heart fluttering.

"Are you saying-"

"Yes."

The foster kid instinct flared up- _Never believe them when they say they want you._

"Because if you are not being serious, I'd rather you left right now and we never mentioned this again."

"Does this seem like the kind of thing I would joke about?" May's tone was still gentle as she moved back a little so she could face Skye square on, but it had its edge of sarcasm that only made it better, more real.

She was going to cry again, damn it. She put her head down, hiding her face.

_This is not a big-girl response. This is not how you accept the Queen's invitation with dignity…but this Queen doesn't know what it means to be _chosen _for the first time in your life…_

"This will change everything," she choked out, looking back up at May as the tears started seeping out again for a completely different reason.

"Haven't you been paying attention?" May responded with a shrug and another small smile, letting Skye dry her own tears. _Everything's already changed._

"Did you ask Coul-the Director?"

"If you say yes, then tomorrow, I'll _tell_ the Director."

Skye felt her heart swell with emotion, not even trying to contain the smile pulling against her lips. May turned away with a smile and slid off the bed, bending to fish something off the floor.

"Does this mean I have to move back inside?"

"We can talk about that in the morning."

May held up an extra blanket. Only then did Skye notice that she too was wearing only a t-shirt and sweatpants.

"Where have you been sleeping?"

"In the cockpit," May answered without hesitation, shaking out the blanket and stretching it over Skye's bed. "It's warmer in here though. Scoot."

Skye couldn't help grinning as she moved over to make room as they stretched out in the mattress together, bundled in separate blankets but sharing the single pillow.

"Hmm-slumber party. Already hella different than my last S.O…" But even as she trailed off, she found that her heart didn't twist _quite_ as painfully.

May's hand brushed hers in the darkness. "Everything resets tomorrow. Consider this the fade-to-black of the first season."

"Does everything reset tomorrow at 5am?"

May turned and caught her eye with a smirk. "All in good time, Grasshopper. We'll get everything mapped out tomorrow."

Skye was still grinning. "Sounds like a plan, A.M."

May's brow furrowed, her head cocking a little even as it rested on the pillow.

"…Yeah, that doesn't really roll of the tongue does it? I'll come up with something else."

May's face turned back up to the darkness, her eyes closing again. "As long as you never call me the Cavalry."

Skye's hand found hers once again in the darkness. _Deal._


	4. Chapter 4

"Make sure your knees don't lock up-be aware of what's happening in all the little places-good. And up…_slowly…_"

Skye released her ankles and straightened up one vertebra at a time, just like May had showed her.

"Shoulders."

…_up, back, down…_

"Good resting posture, find your center…feel the breath as it connects to your back…"

_One breath, two breaths_…she felt May's presence moving slowly around her.

"I want you to tell me why we're doing this."

Skye opened her eyes and swiveled her head to find May over her shoulder.

"What? Why we're doing this breathing exercise? You said I needed to start with a new base-"

"You know what I'm asking. Why are we doing this? And go down to plank before you answer."

Skye lowered herself into a runner's lunge first before stepping her other foot back into a plank hold.

"We're training because I want to be prepared to protect, not be protected, no matter the situation." She felt her abs drawing in, holding her against gravity…_Been a little too long since I last used these muscles…_

Forty-three silent seconds passed before May _very slowly _said, "Anything else?"

Skye ground her eyes shut, willing herself not to wince, trying to keep her voice measured.

"Because I want to do better than before." Her arms started to tremble.

"Skye, I've got all day. How long do your abs have?"

_Mind reader… _She sucked in a quick breath.

"_Because I don't want to let someone like _him_ get away with something like _that_ ever again."_

"And _down_." May's tone never changed.

Skye nearly let herself fall face-first into the floor but managed a graceless _knees, chest chin_ drop before her arms gave out.

She breathed in the plastic-and-sweat smell of the gymnastics mat until she felt May move directly in front of her.

"Sit up."

Skye pushed back into plank and hopped her feet between her hands, tucking a foot back as she sat down in the resting spring position May had taught her earlier.

Mirroring the position, her new S.O. sat down within arm's reach. Feeling their pull, Skye looked up and met her eyes. May's expression was solemn.

"I want to be completely clear with you. I can teach you a lot of things-combat, espionage, survival, retrieval, rescue, piloting, you name it. And I can teach you every one of those things without being your friend. But unfortunately for you, we're already across that line, and that means I'm obligated to take care of the inside too. So until you are ready to be honest with yourself, I'll know that you're not being honest with me."

"You want me to talk about what you already know? I thought you appreciated sparing words."

"I want you to make sure that you know what's in there-" May's finger tapped her sternum, "so that you know what to do with it when the situation brings it out. So that you know ahead of time what you are capable of doing and don't wind up in a mess you had no idea you could make."

_Spoken like one who would know. _"Shall I start listing my issues then? You did say that you have all day…"

Something like a smirk flitted across May's face.

"We'll get there a little at a time. But I'm going to make you a promise: every time you hold back on me- in any way, shape or form-I _will_ make sure you regret it. Verbal abuse isn't my style, but I've got plenty of other methods. You can decide if you want to find out what they are."

Skye's abs twinged, but she made herself nod without letting her face change.

"On the other hand, every time you impress me- well, you'll have to wait and see-but I think you'll agree it's worth working for."

Skye nodded, and May shifted into a cross-legged position, beckoning Skye closer. Confused, she moved in until their knees touched, her hands folded between her thighs. May took a deep breath before she looked up and captured Skye's gaze again.

"Now Skye, I don't _want_ to make you hate me, but there will undoubtedly be some days that you will. I am going to be the cause of a lot a pain and frustration for you. However, every good relationship is a two way street, so these are my promises: I promise you that I will never order you to do something that I don't think is useful for you or for the team. I promise that I will never set you to a task that you should not do, morally or otherwise. I will never leave you on your own if I don't think you're ready for it. And I will never, ever lie to you.

"Having said that, there is only one rule."

May's hands reached across the tiny distance between them and covered Skye's in a light clasp.

"You have to trust me. And when you trust me, you follow me without question. Do you understand?"

Skye kept her eyes in the woman's dark gaze, turning her hands up beneath May's, accepting them, clasping, a double promise.

_I understand._

"Yes ma'am."

This time, May actually did smirk.

"Let's stick to 'Copy that.' I'll let someone call me ma'am when I turn eighty."

She rose to her feet, pulling Skye up with her, only dropping her hands when Skye's feet were firmly under her.

"Let's begin."

* * *

><p>The first few weeks were nothing short of a boot camp, front-loaded with conditioning. Presses, raises, and lifts always started the moment she and May finished their morning run through the empty maze of the underground Playground. A lap had been added each day, then sprint sets across the hangar for speed training. May would always lead her in meticulous stretches afterward to avoid cramps and muscle tears, but Skye still woke up on the third morning with every muscle begging for reprieve. When May knocked at 7 a.m., it took her longer than usual to dress and stumble to the door, running shoes in hand.<p>

May was merciless.

"Not gonna answer the door with shoes on means that you run without them," she said, plucking them from Skye's hands. "Let's go." She took off before Skye could get a word out, just choked her surprise down and stumbled after her, catching up as soon as her head cleared enough.

Skye had to focus more on not letting her bare feet slide on the polished concrete than on the aches in her muscles as they loosened themselves for the day. They ran two laps around the base in silence before May spoke again.

"I don't think I need to tell you that some of the worst situations you will find yourself in will usually include you being injured, and being able to press through pain is crucial to your survival or escape," she said in a voice that gave no hint that she was exerting herself at all. "Pain's just a message-and you can learn to pocket the message."

"Copy that."

Tactical training was usually in the afternoons. Sometimes it involved studying from the telescreen with coffee at her elbow-reading up on the strange assortment of subjects May assigned. Sometimes it was hotwiring engines. Sometimes it was spoken French. Sometimes it was old mission assignments that Skye was sent to retrieve from the crashed SHIELD archives. Often, it was outdoor survival skills.

"There's too much to be done now that SHIELD can't spare us the time to go out for the standard four-week outdoor crash course," May had said, dropping a stack of field manuals on Skye's workspace. "I can see that you're relieved about that. Unfortunately, what that means for you now is that you have to just commit all this information to memory and expect me or circumstance to test you on it at any time."

She would still have taken books over bugs any day.

Most days included gear training- how to properly pack and put on a parachute, how to fit, don, man, or solo operate a repelling harness, and the like. Skye had to do each task perfectly three times in a row, then three more times in the dark, then three more times with distraction.

Those last three rounds were always interesting. May could certainly be creative with those.

The first time she had fired a gun behind Skye's head as she repacked a parachute, Skye had been so startled that she nearly overturned the table as she leapt away from the sound.

"_Whattheactualfuckingshit_-" had gotten out of her mouth before she got herself under control.

To her credit, May actually looked surprised as well as amused by Skye's reaction. She pursed her lips, but Skye saw her cheeks pulling like she was trying really hard not to smile. "I'm s-" a chuckle broke out of her, and she covered her mouth, looking a little abashed.

If she hadn't been so shocked, Skye would have been pissed. She gave May a break, though, and turned away.

"Ok. Distraction Test #1 failed. I'll start again." She breathed intentionally as she shook out the parachute silk, but she still felt herself smiling as she heard May doing the same.

"It _is_ nice to hear you laugh," Skye managed to say before the firing started again.

* * *

><p>Hand-to-hand combat training with Agent Melinda May was every bit as terrifying as Skye expected it to be.<p>

They started small. At May's suggestion, they went back to the beginning, incorporating into her stances and attacks the focus of grounding and centering that May's _tai qi _had taught her. Working with a woman was markedly different than learning from a man whose strength and stature had always given him the immediate advantage. Skye quickly realized that the biggest difference between her two S.O's (and the reason Ward had never been able to kill her) was that May never relied on her strength alone being enough to win.

Where Ward's teaching had been about deliberateness and maximization of opportunity, May's teaching pulled everything into a core. Her _tai qi _focused on the connection between all the parts of the body and the downward flow of energy, which kept one grounded and minimized the energy expended in each movement. She let Skye come at her repeatedly from all sides to demonstrate that well-grounded stances and awareness of the complete body minimized nearly every risk and prepared a person for nearly all attacks.

"Know your opponents-assess everything before you even meet the first punch. Know their goal-are they trying to disable, capture, or kill? Know their weapons-arms or hand-to-hand? Get in their head and learn to recognize patterns as quickly as possible-most fighters don't even realize that they fall back on 'what works' for them when under pressure. Sometimes that's still difficult, but the faster you know it, the sooner you can find the weakness in it."

She taught Skye about threat assessment. Learning to count the men and guns was easy. Getting a reading on the individual strengths of soldiers was harder. May had her practice on the newest arrivals to the Playground as they came in for a meal in the dining area.

"Ex-military. You see the way he carries himself? What does that mean when you fight him? Which side of his body does he favor?"

"The brunette by the door-how is she armed? Which weapon is the most dangerous? How would you take it from her? What's the old injury that she's overcompensating for?"

"If you had to get from this side of the room to the other and every person in this room was supposed to stop you, how would you do it?

Marksmanship and weapons always seemed to follow combat, as though May needed Skye's arms to already ache before she made her hold a gun. Drilling was one of the only things that was easy. Sometimes, May would have her take apart and reassemble a rifle and tell her she couldn't break until she did it in under a minute three times in a row.

Some days, however, they were called up. May would occasionally disappear into Coulson's office for hours at a time, leaving Skye with bookwork. Sometimes Skye was called for research. Coulson was never very talkative during those meetings-all business and no smiles. Eventually, Skye quit trying to chat him up.

May was still in a meeting with Coulson when Skye finished her afternoon bookwork one day and wandered to the cafeteria. She was a little surprised by the number of people milling around, but relieved to see Trip lounging at a small table by himself. Filling a plate with protein and carbs- she'd stopped caring about the flavor of food when it had turned into fuel-she slipped through the crowds and into the chair at his elbow.

"How you doing today?" he said with a tired smile.

"Sore, exhausted, and starving. You?" She dug into the food in front of her.

"Just the second one. We just got back from an interview-picked up a few new faces on the way."

They sat in silence for awhile, just people-watching as Skye inhaled her dinner. Five weeks since their Bus had arrived at the playground, SHIELD was no longer just a ragtag band of strays-it was already starting to feel like an organization once again. They had Science, Technology, and Specialist divisions rather than every agent pulling double duty. However, if Skye had not already analyzed the potential threat level of each person in the room, she wouldn't have know Specialist from SciTech.

"We're gonna need to find some super-secret garment manufacturer to start cranking out SHIELD apparel again," Skye joked around a mouthful of pasta salad. "We may be an organization, but the Boy Scouts of America still look more official than us."

"Coulson already nixed that for the foreseeable future," Trip said quickly. "Said we don't need anything coming down on a ghost organization just yet."

Deflated, Skye slumped down into her seat. "Damn it, I was really looking forward to new clothes…" She laughed it off, but the yawning sadness below her stomach lingered, tugging her down.

Trip's hand rested on the back of her chair as he tried to catch her eye. "You know you don't need a badge or a jacket to know that you belong, right? Hell, you're practically a founding member at this point."

Embarrassed, Skye spun her fork on the table. "I know. I just-it would have been nice to have some kind of…something to know that we aren't just playing pretend. That this is real. That what we've given our lives to isn't just some game of wishful thinking."

"We'll get there, sister. All in good time." He slid his arm around her and squeezed her gently. Skye didn't even feel bad about leaning into his shoulder.

"Do you miss it? What it was before?"

Trip was quiet for a little while before answering.

"That's like comparing apples to orangutans. It's hard to even think of these two organizations as the same thing. Right now though, we are on a great adventure doing things that no one in our time has ever gotten to do. And this time, my S.O. isn't secretly working for the other side. So no, I don't miss it. Do you?"

Skye's gaze flickered over to Fitz, who had just floated into the hall and was uncertainly staring at the crowd. Simmons came through the door behind him, saw Fitz, stopped short, and immediately backtracked back into the dark hallway.

"Sometimes," Skye said with a sigh.

Then May appeared in the door, lifting her chin in a wordless gesture. Skye sat up and grabbed her plate.

"But not always."

* * *

><p>Occasionally, they went out.<p>

May took her to a 24-hour gym in the nearby town one night.

"What exactly are we going to do here that we couldn't do-oh." Skye stopped short as May led them around a corner and the smell of chlorine hit her nostrils. Her heart sank. "Goddammit."

"You had to have known this was coming eventually," May said, leading her to a bench along the deck of the Olympic-sized pool.

"_Eventually_ is such a soothing word."

May tossed her a smaller bag out of the duffle she had carried in with them. "Locker room's over there."

There was a pair of leggings and a thin t-shirt in the bag instead of a swimsuit.

"Are we training for water ballet?" she mumbled as she came out of the locker room, barefoot on the damp tiles.

May was wearing similar clothes, probably what she was always wearing under her usual ensemble. "There will rarely be a time when you will be in water in a manner you planned. We're not gonna start with perfect swimming conditions."

"You do know that I can't really swim, right? When you change homes every few months, you're hardly worth the investment of any kind of lessons. That one time at Quinn's villa was just adrenaline-filled dog-paddling in a shallow pool."

"Yep, that's why we're starting in the deep end." May pulled two kickboards out of the nearby equipment closet.

Skye forced herself to move forward.

May passed her a hair elastic when they were both standing on the edge. Skye was still tying her hair back as May tossed in the kickboards and then pushed Skye in after them.

Reflexive kicking and clawing brought her quickly back to the surface, but she still swallowed a choking gulp of chlorinated water and came up coughing between gasps. She grabbed the nearest kickboard and held on, treading water as she gagged out the disgusting cocktail of chemicals. She heard a much lighter splash, and soon May was gliding up next to her.

"Was that _really _necessary?" Skye asked without facing her, her forehead resting on the foam board as she got her breath back. Her arms were trembling.

"I needed to see your automatic reaction. Now I know where we're starting from. Better than I expected, actually. Now follow my lead."

They spent the next hour in the water. Sometimes just kicking up and down the lanes like a horizontal warm-up run, sometimes moving to the shallow end for May to teach her the simple front crawl, then back to the lanes to practice it.

"Imagine four points-ankles, hips, shoulders, wrists. When they're in a straight line, everything takes less energy. Remember that when diving or swimming vertically or horizontally."

It _did_ make the front crawl a lot easier, but it was still hard to keep herself facedown in the water without her heart rate picking up.

When May led her back to the shallow end and dropped a handful of coins into the water, Skye's heart clenched with dread. She checked her breathing and said nothing.

"First you need to just get comfortable with not panicking when underwater. Put your face in-just your face-and count the coins. Make a map. Add up how much money's down there. Don't think about where you are-just focus on your task. Go."

It went better than Skye expected.

"Twenty-five seconds in one breath. That's a good starting point. Now retrieve the coins. Don't worry about doing it all in one breath. Just focus on not having to touch a coin more than once. Make your plan, consider the details, and then get each one on the first try."

Skye needed three dives the first time. Then two the second time. The third time, May tossed the coins in again, this time further from one another. "Again."

When Skye was passing her a handful of change half a minute later, May was almost smiling.

"Grab the kickboard."

They were halfway down the lane before May spoke again.

"The worst part of my Academy training was swimming. I like fighting opponents with the ground under me. Or making big huge machines do what I tell them to do. But when you're a tiny little girl in a big deep ocean, it's pretty hard to feel like you have any advantage."

They reached the deep end. Skye turned to paddle back up, but May caught her ankle.

"Give me your board."

Skye felt her heart speed up, but she mechanically reached for the edge of the pool and pushed the board to May, who tossed them up on the deck. She turned and caught Skye's eyes, her gaze somehow both gentle and firm as she held out a hand.

"Rule zero." _Trust me._

Skye took her hand and let May pull her away from the edge.

"Keep your head back-let your feet come up- good-see? You float. This is option one. Option two is the dead man's float on your stomach. Next time, we'll work on treading water, but you're too tired for that now. Right now, you just need to get used to this and get your heart rate down."

_Of course she knew._

"Pay attention to your breathing-come on, Skye-you know you can."

Skye pulled in all the techniques she could remember. May was quiet, letting her do it herself, her fingers light around Skye's wrist as she treaded water beside her. It was only after a few minutes had passed in relative silence with Skye floating peacefully with her eyes closed that May spoke again.

"You want to tell me why you don't like being in the water?"

Skye sighed but answered without opening her eyes. "Not all foster families are created equal. There was one family that lived near the coast, and we went to the beach a few times together when I was with them. One of the kids obviously couldn't stand having to share his parents' attention, but he was sly about it. He tricked me into following him out into the waves when I was too small to fight the current. When a rip tide pulled me out, he grabbed me like he was protecting me, but then he would push me underwater and hold me there, but always pull me up when he knew I was about to breathe water. From the shore, it probably looked like a brave nine year-old doing his best, trying to save his foster sister. And that's how everyone reacted to it when he finally had me scared shitless and swam me back in. I was catatonic for hours after that. And he had scared me so badly that I never told his parents, worried he'd do it again and finish me off."

May's hand tightened marginally on her wrist.

"How old were you when that happened?"

"Six."

A few more minutes passed in silence. May was still holding her wrist, monitoring her pulse, and Skye was about three seconds from falling asleep when May let go of her.

"Ask me a question."

"What?" Skye opened her eyes and saw May holding back a smile as she bobbed at her shoulder.

"For six weeks I've seen you occasionally less than thrilled at an assignment, but this is the first time I've seen you genuinely scared and move forward anyway. Now ask me a question. Something you've been wanting to know but haven't read in my file."

Slowly, it dawned on Skye what was happening. She let herself grin up at her S.O.

"I finally impressed you."

"Don't get cocky. You only get one question." May smirked.

Skye asked the one she'd been wondering for six weeks.

"What was _your_ S.O. like?"

May didn't seem surprised by the question, but she looked away as she answered.

"Intense. Science-minded, a real clear thinker. Hard to fluster, calmer than a person should be allowed to be when under that much pressure. Patient though. Patient like my mom never was. And I needed that."

"Is she still…"

"One question too many. Save it for next time."

She felt May's hand cradle the back of her head, startling her a little. "Don't turn upright-just roll sideways and front crawl to the edge. Two laps with the board and you're done for tonight."

Skye did her last two laps with a grin on her face, trying to think of the next thing she could do to earn the_ next time_.

* * *

><p>She drew the line at waking up before May. However, she was now good at responding quickly, never hovering on the verge of sleep, going from 'dead' to 'ready' in half a second.<p>

When the knock on her door came at 5:20 (May had been working her backwards from 7) the next morning, she rolled out of bed and got her shoes on in ten seconds flat. She was already dressed but was still working her hair into a ponytail when she stepped into the hallway.

"Grab a jacket." May said, setting out at a walk without her. Skye ducked back into her room and fished a tattered hoodie off the floor of her closet, pulling it over her head as she trotted after May.

"Topside today, huh?"

"Sort of."

They were on the way out to the garage, where Skye was surprised to see a few other people already moving about. Many of the faces were new, most carrying bags.

She glanced at May as they stopped just outside the circle of activity. "New arrivals?"

"And one departure." May nodded over at one of the unmarked sedans.

Skye looked, and her heart dropped.

"Jemma."

Simmons turned as Skye started walking mechanically towards her, closing the trunk of the car, but not before Skye saw the suitcase.

"Skye-I thought-"

Skye cut her off with a hug, tighter than she meant for it to be because Simmons choked out a gasp.

"May!"

Skye heard Coulson's voice over her shoulder, the tone sharper than usual. Ignoring it, she released her grip on Simmons and pulled back to look her in the eye.

"Where are you going?" Skye heard the tremor under her voice and swallowed quickly.

Simmons looked at the ground, biting her lip. "I don't know yet. I just…I can't be _here_ anymore."

"Is this because of Fitz?"

"No," she said firmly, looking up again. But it was too quick, her tone was too sharp...

"Skye." Coulson's voice with her name this time, and then she knew for certain that she wasn't supposed to have seen this.

A man she didn't recognize appeared at Simmons' shoulder. "Director Coulson says it's time to go." He climbed into the car and started the engine.

Skye grabbed the scientist once again into a crushing hug. "Please don't tell me this is the last time I'm going to see you." Her eyes went blurry, and she ground her eyes shut.

Simmons hugged her back for a short moment but then was gently pushing her away.

"I certainly hope not, but-" She leaned in and kissed Skye's cheek. "Say goodbye to everyone else for me."

Simmons didn't meet her eyes again as she turned away and climbed into the car. It slid away almost immediately, out the open garage door into the undefined gray dawn.

Skye turned to face Coulson, but he was already gone. Only May stood behind her, silently waiting. A flicker of her eyes warned Skye to dry her tears as they walked out into the cold half-dark to watch the car disappear.

"Thank you," Skye said quietly, as she dragged the cuff of her hoodie across her cheek, crumpling the emotion into a dense knot in her stomach as she acknowledged that May had just broken the rules for her once again.

May didn't look at her, just stared after the tail lights as they disappeared around a bend. "She needed it too."

* * *

><p>"There's no excuse for this. You were doing better than this <em>three weeks ago<em>. Now tell me what's wrong."

Skye set the safety and tossed the rifle down on the table, yanking off her ear protectors as she rounded on May. "When were you all planning to tell me that Ward is in our fucking _basement_?"

May held her gaze without reacting for a long, stretching second before pulling off her safety glasses. "When it became relevant."

Skye stared at her incredulously as she ripped off her own safety glasses. "The man who tried to kill half our team is locked up in a concrete square downstairs-right under our feet, and you think that's not a _relevant _fact to the rest of us?"

"What would you have done, Skye? Gone down and said hello? Set up a chess board with him?"

Skye felt the anger coiling in her chest burst into flame at May's flippancy. She opened her mouth to respond, but May held up one finger. "Let's take this to the mats. It's about time you had something hot to use."

By the time Skye's first jab was swinging past May's ear only a few minutes later, her heart rate was even higher.

"Don't hold back," May challenged, her eyes bright. "Show me what you want to do."

Considering that she had only sparred with May herself once before, the fight wasn't completely embarrassing. May allowed her a few hits, holding her back but not really fighting back. For some reason, however, this only made Skye angrier.

"I don't _care_ if this isn't real," Skye spat as she twisted behind May's reach, dodging her swing as she put a hit in the back of the woman's leg.

"I don't _care_ if there's no badges or jackets or clearance levels or formal protocol anymore."

_Swing, jab, dodge, hop, deflect, swing._ Her words seemed to fray as they came out faster, riding on a single thread.

"I don't _care_ if he's the Director and you're the deputy-you can't shut the creature of my nightmares up in our cellar and not expect me to be mad! He's put our own people in the ground…he deserves to die, but Coulson brought him _here_. How could he _do_ that?"

May took Skye's next hit to her solar plexus exactly as Skye expected her too, rolling with the energy to bring Skye close enough to seize, but Skye was ready to counter the grab and twist May's arm back as she brought her ankle into the back of the woman's knee, sending her to the ground. May pulled Skye down with her, however, and swung her onto her back. It was only once her S.O. was pinning her with a hand light around her windpipe, however, that she finally responded, leaning in close.

"It's not going to go back to what it was. It can't. Goddammit, I wish we could, but we _can't._ So if bringing him here means that we have even the slightest advantage over HYDRA for the future, it is worth doing to make sure they do no more damage to what we have left."

She stayed there, holding Skye's gaze as they both breathed slowly, bringing themselves back to the controlled resting energy.

"But as for this, what you just did?" May finally said, her tone completely different. She leaned back a little, her dark gaze glimmering "You nailed it."

And then she smiled. Really smiled.

She pulled back, releasing Skye's hands and throat, and sat back on Skye's thighs. "I was half-expecting you to turn sloppy and swinging, but you're past that point. You're acting in habit and not thinking twice about how to fight, even when you're upset. And that's everything we've been working towards. You should be proud of yourself." She looked genuinely pleased, the most satisfied Skye had ever seen her.

Skye sat up as May shifted off her, sitting down with their thighs touching-facing each other and yet looking past one another. She pulled in her feet, wrapped her fingers around her ankles, knowing she should feel happy, excited, pleased, _something_, but the cold anger lingered, freezing everything else.

"Do you really not feel anything?" she asked, staring down at her feet. "Does it not bother you at all to know that he's here? After everything he did to Koenig, to Hand, to Fitz and Simmons..." Her voice quivered a little, and she closed her eyes, focusing on the treacherous sentiment trying to work its way out of the place where she'd locked it up.

She felt May staring at her until Skye opened her eyes and turned to meet her gaze. The woman's dark eyes were icy chasms as she answered in barely more than a chilling whisper.

"I hate it. I hate that he's here. I hate that he's not going to die for the murders he's committed. I hate that the person who killed in cold blood-_killed people I care about_-is still valuable to us. And I could put all this hate into imagining ways I would like to torture him or end him, but instead, I'm making it work for me. I'm making it work for you."

Skye felt her face fall. "Is _this_ why we've been working so hard? Is this why-"

"Skye, ask me a question." May's eyes seemed to plead. Skye replayed May's last words in her mind and caught the key phrase.

"What happened to your S.O.?" The sinking feeling in her stomach told her she already knew the answer.

May held her gaze, and Skye knew she was letting her see the change in her eyes for a reason. Finally, she turned her face away, looking somewhere over Skye's shoulder.

"You already know what happened to Victoria Hand."

_Oh Christ._

Skye reached over without a second thought, catching May's hand in a tight hold.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, the two words heavy with unneeded explanation- _I'm sorry for your loss. Sorry I didn't try to understand. Sorry for every time I had thought I was the one who had suffered the most for Ward's betrayal. _

May did not respond to the touch, but eventually she turned to face Skye again. Her eyes were shimmering.

"I've made a lot of mistakes, Skye, and earned myself a debt of darkness for each one. And if I were to let it consume me, I'd never come back from it. So I control it. Make it work for you and for me. And maybe, just maybe, it will be what we need to keep 'someone like him' from ever getting away with 'something like that' ever again. But the hardest part is knowing that it's just a hope. That it still all depends on _you_-whether you're ready. Prepared. And brave."

Skye felt herself moving forward without thought, her hand reaching for May's cheek as the first tear fell. She kissed her brow, her cheek, her temple, then pulled back to catch the woman's eyes.

"You're _making_ me that person," she whispered, feeling her eyes blaze with emotion. "You should be proud of yourself."

May closed her eyes, sending two more silent tears south, and reached out and rested a hand on Skye's shoulder, her fingers curling to grip her neck in a gentle half-clasp, possessive and protective.

Skye brought her other hand up to mirror the touch, holding May's neck gently. "We're gonna be all right, May."

May didn't open her eyes. "I want to believe that." Her voice was so hollow, it seemed to echo.

"Rule zero."

_Trust me._

May's arms moved slowly, finally wrapping around her, bringing their hearts against each other.

"I do."

They stayed that way for a long time. She only felt May move her hand once, presumably to dry her tears. Eventually, she shifted within Skye's grip, and they moved apart as the woman climbed to her feet, reaching down to pull Skye up with her. May caught her eyes, a single look telling her _status quo, _and Skye gave her a small nod before turning away.

They packed up the mats, pulled on their shoes, and May fished her black flight jacket from the floor as they left the room.

"I can't believe I said that about the jackets," Skye muttered, covering her face with one hand.

May patted her on the back as they made their way back to the firing range. "Don't be to hard on yourself. Everyone's got something they're nostalgic for."

"What do _you_ miss?" Skye glanced over at her with a raised eyebrow.

May didn't look at her as she replied.

"Coulson."

* * *

><p>"So do you understand now <em>why<em> we did first aid and field medicine three months ago?"

Any reply Skye might have said was cut off by the jolt of pain that shot from her ankle as the woman finished inspecting the wrapping and gently moved it off her lap and back onto the table Skye had propped it on. She couldn't see May, but her voice shifted closer.

"Let me look." She touched the back of Skye's hand.

Automatically, Skye lifted the bag of ice.

May's fingers ghosted over her skin, gently pressing here and there. Skye's eyes were still closed, but she knew the other woman was watching her face closely for twitches of pain. She kept her face still, even when the jolt of pain crackled through her nervous system and she knew May was pressing right on the break.

"Okay," May said, nudging Skye's hand to bring the bag of ice back to its position.

Skye tipped her head back in replaced the bag of ice on her cheekbone. "Do I have a black eye yet?" she mumbled, trying to use as few of her facial muscles as possible.

"It's getting there. A fall like that, you're lucky that's _all_ you're getting on your face for it."

She felt May's hand slip under the hem of her t-shirt and slide gently over her ribs, palpating for cracks that, fortunately, didn't seem to be there.

"Very lucky indeed. Going to have some fantastic bruises there tomorrow though. You ready to move?"

Skye mumbled something that could have been curse words if she'd bothered to open her mouth.

"That's what I thought. Come on, then-good foot down."

May had an arm around her ribs and was lifting her from the chair as Skye planted her uninjured foot on the cold concrete floor, letting the bag of ice hang loose as May hung Skye's arm around her shoulders. For the first time, they moved slowly, side by side, from the medical corridor towards the barracks. Skye was glad it was so late at night-hopefully no one would get to see this spectacle.

"How soon are you going to make me do the night recon test again?" she muttered as she hopped slowly along next to May, who was surprisingly bearing most of her weight with the hand that was on her hip.

"Not until that ankle has been healed for four weeks."

"What if we don't have that kind of time? What if we're called out before then?"

"Then we will take along another agent, and the world will still turn, and you will still be here, safe, and healing well so that you can be out again as quickly as possible."

"Copy that."

"Until then, congratulations. You just got yourself out of three weeks of workouts and runs. I'll put you in the drive/fly simulator once you can sit upright again."

They had reached Skye's door, which May pushed open with her elbow. She said nothing about the chaos of papers on the desk or explosion of clothes on the floor, just maneuvered Skye through the mess to her bed. Skye sat on the edge as May tugged back the covers and piled clothes at the foot of her bed to elevate her leg on.

"I'll come in the morning and bring you some crutches in time for breakfast," she promised, helping Skye lay down and wrapping the sweating bag of ice in one of Skye's t-shirts before handing it back to her. "Make sure you're drinking water. And I wouldn't blame you for making use of these." She set a bottle of painkillers on the nightstand next to a bottle of water.

"Oh, thanks," Skye mumbled dryly from behind the bag of ice as May arranged the covers over her.

There was a slight pause where May stopped moving, but the door had not yet opened to signal her exit. Then, shockingly,

"Ask me a question."

Skye lifted the ice pack in surprise. May was perched on the edge of her mattress, eyes expectant.

"I just fell twenty feet off the side of a building because I didn't check for ice on the windowsill, and that _impressed_ you?" Skye asked incredulously.

"You also fell exactly the way you were taught to fall in order to minimize injury, got yourself up immediately without me having to come rescue you, got yourself to the car, and took care of all your wounds correctly without my help. So except for what you did wrong, you did everything right. Believe me Skye, I am _very_ impressed." May's expression was not at all sarcastic.

If it hadn't hurt so damn much, Skye would have grinned.

"Then tell me, what was the most humiliating thing that happened to you during your training days? Because I'd love to hear it if it tops this." Skye set the cold compress back on her cheek, closing her eyes.

She could hear the smile in May's voice as she began her story.

"When I was at the Academy, I had the terrible idea to enroll in Ballroom Dance as an elective…"

* * *

><p>When Skye woke up the next morning to a fresh bag of ice balanced on top of her ankle and a pair of crutches leaning against her bed, she was only a little surprised. When she sat up, however, and saw that her floor had been cleaned and her desk had been organized, she was downright shocked.<p>

Once she got herself out of bed and gimped to her tiny closet, she opened it to find all her clothes hung neatly, the dirty ones tied up in the laundry bag, and one surprise hanging between her shirts.

A black SHIELD flight jacket.

Logo and all.


	5. Chapter 5

***A/N: Hey guys, I committed the awful author's folly of posting a chapter before I'd really ironed out the ending, meaning that later I backtracked a little and needed to fix ch4, moving some of the conversations into that chapter rather than this one. I should have just waited to publish. Sorry! If you read ch4 within the first day or two after it was posted, it probably was different than what you'd see now, mostly in this last two scenes (their sparring match and Skye's injury), but a little extra in the swimming lesson scene. Anyway, sorry again, but you should check back and make sure you've read the later version before reading this chapter.**

* * *

><p>She was trying to decide if this was worse than the last time-the last time she'd felt this particular sinking feeling of hollowed-out dread. It had been present that day in Austin when she had slipped away from Coulson's team and snuck off to meet Miles at his safehouse, and when she had later opened the door of his bedroom to find the Cavalry herself holding out her t-shirt and telling her very calmly to <em>get dressed<em>. But now, buckled in the quinjet across from Hunter and next to Coulson, with May severe and silent at the controls, not even facing her but voicing her disapproval all the same…the crushing, sinking, hollow feeling of dread had Skye immobile within its grip.

She knew she was in trouble.

May had been her usual, silent self on the whole flight back from the city where Coulson had sat across from Raina at a white-tablecloth restaurant while May and Skye listened from the kitchen and Hunter watched from the next table. It had been maybe only an hour since Skye had listened to Raina's threat to expose Simmons and received a crushing slam against the wall when she had tried to break through May's authority and give herself up for Simmons' sake. Only minutes later, she had slipped out the back of the restaurant and raced ahead of her team to the place Raina had said they would go- unknowingly racing toward the bad news and bloodbath that waited in the darkness.

She had disobeyed her leaders and abandoned her team.

May hadn't said anything at all to her yet, but the temperature of her silence was Skye's warning: it was only a matter of time.

Skye hadn't even had the energy to demand an explanation from Coulson about what was happening with Simmons. The entire exchange with her team inside the bloody back room had been all she had the presence of mind for, even during the whole ride back to base in the quinjet. She didn't even feel the anger or the grief that would have seemed only natural, now that her only living parent was a proven monster. It was the same yawning emptiness that had taken over the day they had discovered Ward was a traitor-like a safety switch thrown when the darkness was too deep to look into at the moment.

Today, she was grateful for it. But dread still had a claw in and was digging away in the back of her mind.

_What was May going to say?_

When they touched down at the base again and had taxied safely into the underground hanger, she, Coulson, and Hunter unbuckled quietly.

"Simmons will be back soon," Coulson said, catching Skye's eye as the cargo door was lowered. "You all should stay up and wait for her."

May appeared in the door of the cockpit and folded her arms.

"You guys go on in," she said coolly.

Hunter and Coulson moved down the ramp without another word.

Skye didn't have to be told to stay.

As a cold silence stretched, Skye's mind involuntarily shoved forward another memory-the very first time she had ever experienced this particular feeling. She remembered sitting in a middle school's principal's office, holding an ice pack against bloody knuckles while the boy down the bench held one against his split lip, listening to the secretary get her foster mom on the phone and knowing that she had done it again-that she had just ruined another good thing. The empty dread had hollowed her out, leaving her without even grief as her DHS agent had arrived instead of her foster mom. She had already packed Skye's things.

Fear of the unknown was one thing. The inevitability of the thing she feared most was worse.

"You disobeyed a direct order. Twice." May's low voice slipped in and scattered the memories like smoke.

Deciding to face her accuser, Skye turned and met her eyes.

"I'm not going to apologize for that, May. You all kept me in the dark."

May held her gaze unflinchingly.

"We have a system in this organization, Skye. A chain of command that operates on the condition of trusting obedience. Which is why I asked you to agree to only one rule."

Her choice of words triggered a memory, and Skye flung it at her. "Don't you remember the last time Coulson told us to trust the system? That system sent Ward and Fitz into a combat situation to die."

"And do you remember what happened when you found that out?" May did nothing except uncross her arms, but the heat in the room seemed to be rising. "Coulson broke protocol and brought us after them. Do you think that same man would leave Simmons stranded within HYDRA to fend for herself?"

Skye shook her head, rising to her feet. She was further down the ramp than May, so the woman was taller than her for once.

"I want to believe that-I want to believe that he knew exactly what he was doing-but you all deliberately withheld all of that information. About Simmons being in HYDRA in the first place, about her extraction plan, about the source of the carvings…"

"Do you remember the Clairvoyant, Skye? Do you remember why it's dangerous for one person to know everything?"

Something in Skye's chest sparked at that reminder.

"That's bullshit-look how much you're already in on! How is this any different?"

May took a half step forward, the air around her seeming to crackle. "Then why is it not enough for me to tell you that Coulson has a plan? Is there no one that you trust?"

Skye felt herself combust as she glared up at May, the words falling carelessly from her lips.

"May, I can't just accept orders that put my teammate's life in danger! I'm not you! I'm not a machine!"

She saw the flicker in May's eyes and regretted her words immediately. She didn't have the chance to say anything else though.

The woman wrenched her gaze away and brushed past her down the ramp into the deserted hangar, throwing a final command over her shoulder on the way out.

"Gas the plane and then go talk to Coulson."

* * *

><p>Nearly an hour later, Skye had left Coulson's office, a stack of freshly-printed photos in hand. He had also sent to her account all the scans and photos of carvings that had been withheld from her for the past nine months. There were plenty.<p>

She had also gone to the lab and mechanically hugged Simmons, who had seemed equally stunned by the events of the past three hours. She had been introduced to Agent Morse, the tall, severe brunette who was to thank for Coulson's cool head in front of Raina.

She still needed a shower and a chance to recalibrate, a chance to absorb all the world-shattering information that she had been loaded with today.

But before anything else, she needed May. Needed to see her and make her understand.

She checked the training room. The mess hall. Coulson's office again. The Bus. The cockpit of every plane in the hangar. No sign of her.

May had no office like Coulson's, just her tiny dorm room in the women's barracks hall. Skye had never once gone there-in fact, she could not remember a time she had ever been awake when the woman had been asleep.

Although, there was always a first time for everything.

She found the right door and knocked.

No sound from inside.

She knocked again and tipped her ear towards the door.

"May?"

She put her hand tentatively on the knob, half-expecting it to electrocute her, but it turned without resistance.

Skye pushed in the door a few inches. Darkness seemed to spill outward into the hallway, but she didn't hear a sound. She leaned in and peered around the door.

The shape in May's bed was undoubtedly the woman herself, sprawled on her stomach beneath the covers. Her face was turned away from the door, and her breathing was even, but Skye was certain she was awake. _She taught me to always sleep facing the door. _

"May? Could I come in?"

No reply, no movement, but it was better than rejection. Skye slipped in and shut the door behind her.

As her eyes adjusted and the darkness became more defined, she noticed May's jacket dropped carelessly on the floor, a smudge of ink against the softer dark of the carpet. Compared with the military-precise arrangement of everything else in the room, it felt like a bad sign. Skye at first hesitated at the door, two hands behind her back gripping the knob. Eventually though, her impatient feet carried her forward until she was standing next to May's bed.

"May, I want to apologize for what I said earlier. I know I shouldn't have said that. Partly because it was so disrespectful, but mostly because I know it's not true. You're not a machine. I know that, probably better than anyone. So I'm sorry I didn't think before I spoke."

Still nothing from May, not even a change in her breathing, but Skye pressed on, turning to seat herself lightly on May's mattress, facing away from her and out into the darkness.

"I get it, May. I understand why we can't know everything. But I told you I wouldn't apologize for what I did, and that's still true. I'm not going to be you. I can't. I can't keep myself compartmentalized and carve my emotions out of situations like this. This team is my family, and there will never come a time when I'll be willing to look away from a situation that puts one of them in danger, just because I was ordered to."

Skye stared down at her fingers, twisting together between her knees, the cold dread almost choking her as she went on to the cleaving question.

"I'm sorry, but if that's the agent you need me to be, then I guess that means I'll just keep failing you. And if that means that I can't be on your team anymore…then I'd rather we skipped ahead to the inevitable."

There was no reply from May, but Skye still didn't turn to face her, just focused on forcing her heartbeat back into a manageable state.

"I'm just going to stay here, May," she said into the darkness in front of her, "until you tell me what we're doing next."

Only a few seconds passed with Skye waiting in silence before a few quiet words behind her dispelled it.

"If I've made you think I want you to be just like me, then I owe you an apology."

Skye turned sharply over her shoulder and saw that May had moved like a silent, weightless shadow and was now sitting up, the covers puddled around her legs. Skye turned fully to face her, pulling her legs up onto the mattress and folding them beneath herself.

"What do you-"

"I've been training you to be an agent, Skye, not to be the second edition of the person I've become. Parents who want their kids to be just like them aim too low."

Skye's heart skipped a beat.

_Parents…_

"This organization does not need a cold-hearted assassin or a heartless fighting machine-and that's not what I would ever want for you to be either. I don't want you to become any less than the person you were before, but it scares me just how likely that possibility still is."

May was leaning back against her headboard now, her legs drawn up against her chest, arms wrapped around her legs and her hands grasping her bare ankles. A slant of blue light from the screen of the digital clock on her nightstand lent depth to her features, which were composed as ever.

"Just because you're an agent doesn't mean you have to stop caring about the people you love, fighting for them, or protecting them. But being an agent means we live lives where the decision to protect the world sometimes means we can't always prioritize each other. Sometimes, that backfires. And that's why you have to choose to trust the decisions of your leaders."

Skye sighed, looking down at her feet.

"I know. And Coulson explained to me about Morse and the extraction plan. But why couldn't you tell me that in the kitchen in the first place?"

"Because we have one rule that you agreed to obey. And I needed to see how far that went."

Skye understood, but needed one more thing. Needed to clarify.

"But May…what would you have done? If you didn't know that Simmons had an extraction plan, an agent in place to get her out safely…would you have stood there and let him deny Raina what she wanted, even when you've seen what he's been doing to the walls of his office every night? Is there no part of you that cares more for her than for the mission?"

May's hand was suddenly closing around her wrist in the darkness, her grip as severe as her gaze. "I know you don't have any reason to believe me when I tell you this, but let me be perfectly clear: _No one_ would have more guilt from losing Simmons than me."

The woman abruptly released her wrist, and Skye watched May's eyes leave hers and settle on the duvet between them. More than a few seconds passed, but Skye didn't doubt that she would continue. She was just still selecting her words.

It was like the Bahrain confessional all over again.

"Coulson may have been the one who selected the members by name, but I'm the one who actually assembled this team. Once Coulson was back from 'Tahiti' and requesting a team, Fury knew he would ask me to join up and conferenced me on everything ahead of time-the TAHITI project, GH-325, all of it. Then he let me make the call-who did I want on the plane around Coulson? I gave him the specs-a biotech team to heal and project, a specialist to defend and restrain…and myself to supervise and report. I gave the parameters to Fury, who gave them to Coulson…and here we are."

Skye joined the threads.

"So you think that if anything had actually happened to Jemma, it would indirectly be your fault that she was ever here for it to happen to?"

May was still staring at the mattress as she replied.

"Yeah. She was just a kid when he brought her onto this plane. A starry-eyed scientist with no field experience who was here for the adventure and the exploration. Then the field happens to you. One trauma after another knocks you over, and every time you get back up, something's different. Usually, it's you. She _was _just a kid. But now she's an agent that we can plant in the belly of the beast, our hen in the wolfhouse…and she's the _after_. She's lost that innocence one mission at a time because I told Fury to make sure Coulson had the best possible Science team on this plane."

Skye leaned towards May, trying to draw her gaze to her own.

"May. You can't go that route. If you did, you would have too much else to shoulder-you can't possibly think that you're also at fault for Ward being with us-or for what happened to Fitz..."

May pushed a hand through her hair and down her neck, still staring down at the blanket between them.

"Who says I'm not?"

Skye's hand grabbed hers this time in a tight squeeze.

"_I say it. _And so would anyone else who has seen all you have done to protect us from day one. You have put yourself between us and the darkness more times than I can count-but that's too big of a burden for you to make yourself bear. And if your goal is to make us great agents, then sooner or later, we will each have to face the darkness on our own. You can only help us be ready for that. And you've done that. You're _doing _that."

May was quiet for a long time, her hand still limp within Skye's.

"You didn't send Simmons in unprepared. You told me she was good. Ready for the task the Director set her to. And you knew she wasn't without protection."

May's lip pulled in a strange half-smirk in the dark. "Yeah. Sending a girl into danger unprepared and unprotected is not something I planned to ever do twice."

Nothing in May's tone had changed, but like a rubber band, Skye's mind snapped to the front the words of a conversation from nearly a year ago-the story of the Cavalry's infamous mission…

_Oh Jesus._

She looked at the woman across from her in the darkness, a woman who, surely, must have once been the _before-_ the starry-eyed agent fresh on the field, unscarred and unafraid. And then one trauma at a time had burned everything away. Forging her and refining her as only fire could.

The _after. _

"You say you don't want me to turn out like you. But sitting here, I can't see any reason why that would be a bad thing."

May suddenly, _finally_, looked up, their gazes meeting with the force of magnets aligning.

"I don't want you to be me, Skye-I want you to be _better_."

Skye felt herself smiling, feeling the weight lifting a little, the cold dread clearing like mist before the sun.

"Oh, sure, perfection. Not at all hard to improve on."

May's hand was moving at last, but not holding back-instead, it was extracting itself from Skye's grip.

"Don't joke about this-listen to me." May was shifting, leaning towards her, one hand actually twisting in the fabric of May's shirt to pull her forward. "I am not planning on ever leaving again, but that doesn't mean I will always be there to lead or protect you. And when that time comes-"

"No, May, shut up, don't talk like that-"

"Skye, _listen._" Her volume had not risen at all, but the weight of her tone was so intense that Skye shut her mouth immediately, her eyes searching May's in the darkness.

The hand fisted in her t-shirt twisted tighter.

"If there ever comes a time that you are on your own, without me, or Coulson, or your leaders between the darkness and you, then I need to know that you're ready for anything that could be demanded of you. Even making the decisions that you don't want to make. Obeying the orders that no part of you wants to obey."

Something quivered behind May's words, and Skye put a hand on the arm stretching between them, feeling the tremors beneath her S.O.'s skin. She searched the woman's eyes, seeing the fractures from beneath rising to the surface.

"May? What aren't you telling me?"

Seeming to realize that she was showing a hand that she hadn't intended to show, May suddenly released Skye's shirt and leaned back again, her legs untucking from beneath her as she leaned back against the headboard. Suddenly realizing there was no reason to still be sitting in the dark, Skye reached for the switch on the lamp on the nightstand. As gold light filled the room, she caught the glimmer of tear tracks before May's hand was smearing them away.

"May?" Skye scooted closer until their crossed legs were bumping. She put a hand lightly on the woman's knee. "May, there's nothing you could tell me that could be worse than everything else I've learned today. Please, will you let me understand?"

May had turned her face away, was looking into the corner of the room, the hair that had fallen over her shoulder hiding her face from Skye, and Skye saw her draw a few steady breaths before turning back to face her. Her eyes were still shining.

"What you thought Coulson was doing tonight? Sacrificing one team member to save another? He _is_ capable of that. In fact, you now know that he's doing it right now."

Understanding dawned.

Skye felt her eyes widen involuntarily. "The carvings-"

"Are the first step down the dark road that Garrett blazed ahead of him, a road with an unknown but no less fearsome destination. But he won't let himself go that far-and he's asked me to make that call if…_when_…the time comes."

Cold realization threaded through Skye. She pulled her hand away, felt herself covering her mouth. May's eyes closed, sending tears creeping down her cheeks, her hands tightening around handfuls of the fabric of her pants as she went on in a voice like an open grave.

"A machine could do it. A machine could do it and live with herself. But I don't want to. For every selfish reason, I don't want to have to put him down, orders be damned.

May suddenly looked up at Skye, holding her gaze in the half-light.

"What you just did? Disobeying me, trying to give yourself up if it would save the teammate you love? I would do it in a heartbeat if there was any way…and there's not. He can send in Morse to save Simmons or me to save you, but there's nothing any of us can do to save him from himself."

Skye was moving without thinking, crawling to the top of the mattress and sitting down hip-to-hip with May, bringing one hand to rest lightly on her back as she tipped her forehead against May's temple and spoke into her ear.

"May. We'll find a way."

She felt the woman shake her head minutely against hers.

"I want to believe that."

Skye leaned forward and touched May's chin gently with her other hand, and the woman turned slightly toward her. Skye reached up and brushed the tears gently away, ready to be pushed back at any moment, ready for May to turn away and sever the connection and redraw the blurry borders of their relationship…but she let herself tentatively ask for more.

"Will you let me help you?"

As May stared solemnly into her eyes for a suspended second, Skye felt all the other questions pass between them.

_Will you let me stay by your side?_

_Will you tell me I'm wanted, not just tolerated?_

_Will you tell me _you _want me with you?_

Instead of answering, however, May just leaned in and let her face drop into the curve of Skye's shoulder. Skye's arms encircled her gently as they both drew their legs in, curling into one another as May folded herself into Skye's space, fitting themselves in and around each other like complementary shapes. May's tears were of a quieter sort than Skye's, but she still felt the collar of her shirt grow damp beneath May's cheek. As she tugged the blanket up over their legs and drew the woman closer against her, Skye felt herself smiling almost sadly.

_If we were relatively normal, adjusted, untraumatized individuals, we never would have reached this point with one another._

Her hand fell to May's ribs, resting just over the scars only she had seen. Her fingers traced its borders through the woman's shirt, memorizing its shape and pressing in warmth. 

_But if we were relatively normal, adjusted, untraumatized individuals, we wouldn't need this at all._

"We're such a mess, aren't we, Skye?" May said beneath her chin. "Both needing so desperately exactly what we never let ourselves ask for." She felt her hand tracing gently along her ribs, lingering precisely where two bullets had nearly killed her almost a year ago.

Skye tightened her arms around May and brushed her lips against the woman's brow.

"Maybe we are. But when we both give each other all of the nothing we have, it's amazing how that nothing somehow manages to be enough."

May tipped her face up, moving her hand up to brush Skye's cheek gently for a moment before leaning in to press a single, gentle kiss against her lips.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is."

* * *

><p><strong>*AN: Well, that's it. Please let me know how you felt about the way I wrote them/any other Skye/May stories you'd like to read-I'm sure I'll be writing more.**


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